Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Legal experts say the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely brought
Like the gun charge, the tax charges are rarely brought against first-time offenders and even more rarely result in jail time, Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI general counsel and NBC News contributor, tweeted Tuesday. "This is if anything harsh, not lenient," he wrote.
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti agreed. "It insults the intelligence of the American people to compare misdemeanor tax charges to a scheme to steal Top Secret documents and obstruct justice when the government asked for them back," he tweeted, comparing the charges against Hunter Biden to the recent federal indictment against former President Donald Trump. "If anything, Hunter Biden was treated harshly — those crimes are rarely charged."
Christie: Maybe Trump should’ve gone through boxes with classified documents instead of golfing
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4058124-christie-trump-boxes-of-classified-documents/
“He said the reason he didn’t give the documents back was because he just so very busy, and he didn’t have time to respond to a grand jury subpoena because he needed to get his golf shirts and pants out of the box,” Christie said on “CBS Mornings.” “I mean, does anybody in America believe this?”
“Look, I think the problem is going to be, for him over time, is that people are just not going to buy it,” the 2024 presidential hopeful and former New Jersey governor said. “And when you think about how many days of golf he’s played since he left office, maybe he could have skipped a couple of rounds of golf and gone through the boxes to respond to a subpoena from a grand jury.”
Hunter Biden to plead guilty in deal with feds
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4058134-hunter-biden-to-plead-guilty-in-deal-with-feds/
“Hunter Biden is getting away with a slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery,” Comer said. “We will not rest until the full extent of President Biden’s involvement in the family’s schemes are revealed.”
Comer’s bribery allegations stem from a tip to the FBI the agency was unable to corroborate.
Trump weighed in on Hunter Biden’s case after news of the plea agreement broke, criticizing the charges as being low-level.
Hunter Biden reaches plea deal with feds to resolve tax issues, gun charge
Under an agreement detailed Tuesday in a filing in federal court in Delaware, President Joe Biden’s son will plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax charges. Prosecutors have also charged him with possessing a firearm while being a user of illegal drugs — a felony — but have agreed to dismiss that charge if he completes a two-year period of probation.
Primary source of Steele dossier Igor Danchenko acquitted of lying to FBI
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steele-dossier-igor-danchenko-acquitted-lying-to-fbi/
Igor Danchenko, the Russian analyst considered the primary source of the "Steele dossier," a 2016 opposition research report filled with unproven, compromising personal and financial information about then-candidate Donald Trump, walked out of federal court on Tuesday after a jury cleared him of all charges of making false statements to the FBI.
Danchenko's case stems from special counsel John Durham's probe into the origins of the Russia investigation. In 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr tasked Durham with reviewing the FBI's handling of the investigation into Russia's connection with the 2016 Trump campaign.
The Steele dossier has always been misunderstood
The story of the Christopher Steele dossier took its latest turn this week with the acquittal of Igor Danchenko, an analyst who worked on the dossier and was accused of lying to the FBI about it. The case that John H. Durham brought against Danchenko was so weak that the judge threw out one of the charges before a jury could deliberate on it, and the jury spent only one day before it acquitted Danchenko of the charges against him.
Steele dossier
https://edition.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_6d25bd9d-c786-41d8-abb0-8c8d934f961f
Republican Rep. Steube invoked a common refrain from defenders of the President: that the dossier provided "the very basis of the investigation
CONCLUSION
The dossier was not the basis for the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Kremlin Bizarrely Claims Goal of Demilitarizing Ukraine 'Largely Completed'
On Saturday, Russian officials claimed that Ukraine had, in fact, been demilitarized—in line with the goals of Moscow's invasion of the Eastern European nation—despite clear and significant evidence to the contrary.
Legal Experts React to Trump's Interview With Bret Baier on Fox News
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-bret-baier-interview-legal-experts-react-1807744
Several attorneys said the former president admitted to his alleged crimes.
"Mr. Trump's lawyers had to be cringing during that interview, and DOJ lawyers were no doubt taking notes," Moss told Newsweek. "Mr. Trump confessed to personally going through the boxes and had no explanation for why classified records from those boxes wound up in his personal desk. He placed himself at the scene of the retention and obstruction. This is the stuff of nightmares for a defense attorney."
Brit Hume: Trump defense of taking documents ‘incoherent’
“He seemed to be saying the documents were really his and he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so, and when they were subpoenaed because he wasn’t ready to because he hadn’t sorted them or whatever from his golf shirts,” Hume said. “It was not altogether clear what he was saying, but he seemed to believe that the documents were his, that he had declassified them and therefore he could do whatever he wanted with them.”